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Sexiest Stars of 2016

20. DWAYNE JOHNSON - the former WWE wrestler was chosen as "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine. He also won the Mr. Olympia ICON Award, which is a bodybuilding competition. Earlier in 2016, he also won a People's Choice Award for his HBO series Ballers. He was named 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2016 by Time magazine. He is the world's highest-paid actor, according to Forbes magazine with $64.5 million a year. He first debuted on TV as a wrestler in 1996, so he's now marked his 20th year in the business. The 44-year-old made a name for himself in the late 90's and early 2000's as "The Rock," his brash wrestling persona. He broke out in blockbuster films with his role as The Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns (2001). He cemented his movie star status with his role in Fast Five (2011). He was in two hit films in 2016, Moana and Central Intelligence, but in 2017 he will potentially have three hit films to celebrate including April's The Fate of the Furious, the continuation of his popular character in Fast Five, and Memorial Day's Baywatch reboot.

19. DAISY RIDLEY - the 24-year-old is now known around the world as Rey, the breakout star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, part of one of the biggest movie franchises in history. She was included in the list of People magazine's World's Most Beautiful 2016, but this year she helped to produce a documentary called The Eagle Huntress, which is all about female empowerment and not just subjective beauty. Through her Instagram account, she also talked about confidence issues due to medical problems she had but she overcame them.

18. SASHA LANE - the 21-year-old starred in her very first film American Honey, directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold who discovered Lane sunbathing on a beach. Lane is half-black and half-Maori. She was born and raised in Texas. For her debut role, she's since won Best Actress at the British Independent Film Awards.

By Mark Abrahams for 'GQ'

17. KRISTIAN KORDULA - there is so little information on this actor but he appeared earlier this year in Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots, as well as in one episode of The Mindy Project where he was playing a character who was Indian in his ethnicity. It's not much but he's a guy whose beauty can't be denied.

16. AJA NAOMI KING - the 31-year-old actress first caught me eye in the TV series Emily Owens, M.D., but she is currently co-starring in the hit ABC series How to Get Away with Murder. She recently got a NAACP Image Award nomination for her role in Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation. The Yale University grad has really been standout in her series with another sexy actor who has been on this list, Matt McGorry.

15. DANIEL SUNJATA - the 44-year-old from Chicago who got his Master's from NYU first caught my eye in Showtime's The Feast of All Saints (2001). In 2003, he received a Tony Award nomination for the play Take Me Out. His best and probably his longest role was started in 2004 in FX's Rescue Me. This past year, he played a hotshot, sexy lawyer in Notorious, which replaced Scandal on Thursday nights.

14. SARAH GADON - the 29-year-old Canadian has appeared in several David Cronenberg films within the past fives years. Her two standout roles in that time period were in Denis Villenueve's Enemy and Amma Asante's Belle. In 2016, she had a very sexy role opposite Logan Lerman in Indignation. My favorite role of hers was in the Hulu series 11/22/63, opposite James Franco.

13. RIZ AHMED - the 34-year-old was born in London. His parents are Pakistani immigrants. He got his degree at Oxford University but studied acting at the University of London. His film debut was in Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo (2006). His breakout role was in the black comedy Four Lions (2010). He received a lot of acclaim, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, in Nightcrawler (2014). This year, he was a pretty busy boy. He was in two TV series, The OA on Netflix and The Night Of on HBO. He also had small roles in Jason Bourne and Rogue One - A Star Wars Story.

12. COLTON HAYNES - the 28-year-old actor was in two hit, superhero shows, MTV's Teen Wolf and CW's Arrow. This year, his work output slowed. He only appeared briefly in The Grinder and Scream Queens, which qualifies for this list, but what makes him standout has been his social media output. His Instagram account has been one of the most interesting and sexiest things online.

11. KYLIE BUNBURY - the 27-year-old Canadian has biracial parents. Her father is of Guyanese descent. I first saw her in the CBS series Under the Dome. This year, she had her breakout role as a female Major-League-Baseball player in FOX's Pitch.

10. VINCENT RODRIGUEZ III - the 34-year-old Filipino-American from San Francisco is a triple threat. He sings. He dances. He acts. He's one of the stars of the musical-comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He's the definite object of desire and lust.

9. GAL GADOT - the 31-year-old is a Gucci model and one of the highest-earning models in Israel. She was an enlisted soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces. She made a name for herself in Hollywood by starring in the fourth, fifth and sixth films in The Fast and the Furious franchise. Yet, her role in this year's Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice has many people eager for her solo film Wonder Woman, which is coming in June 2017.

8. TREVANTE RHODES - the 26-year-old is one of the stars of the critically acclaimed Moonlight. He's from Louisiana but graduated from University of Texas at Austin where he was a Track-and-Field star. He got involved in Terrence Malick's film Weightless, which was shot in Texas around 2011 to 2012. That film won't be released until March 2017 though.

7. BRANDY NORWOOD - the 37-year-old R&B star led and co-produced a new sitcom in January 2016 called Zoe Ever After. She released a new and very hot song, "Beggin & Pleadin," which will be a part of her new tour. She also did a reality show with her brother Ray J, which will air on FOX as My Kitchen Rules.

6. RUSSELL TOVEY - the 35-year-old British star of the stage and screen made the list before, but he had such a great year in 2016 that he deserved recognition again. He started the year on Broadway in A View From the Bridge, where jokingly his shirtless scene caused people to faint. He had a small role in The Lady in the Van, a prestige film that was released the year prior in England but had a limited run in the U.S. He had small roles in AMC's miniseries The Night Manager and HBO's movie-version of Looking. His sexiest role was his regular gig in the second season of ABC's Quantico. He will have an even sexier role in the British film The Pass, which is an adaptation of a play at the Royal Court Theatre, which got released in the UK in December.

5. JENNIFER LOPEZ - she's 46 but still extremely hot. The Puerto Rican from the Bronx was a Fly Girl on In Living Color back in 1991. Her first leading role was in Selena (1997). She's the first Latina to earn over $1 million with Out of Sight (1998), opposite George Clooney. Her debut album was On the 6 in 1999. In 2001, her 2nd album J.Lo was #1 on the Billboard charts in the same week her film The Wedding Planner
was #1 in the box office, making her the 1st woman to do that. Over the
decade, she has become the highest-paid, Latin entertainer, building a
successful, business career. She was the inspiration for Sir
Mix-a-Lot's, 1992 hit, "Baby Got Back" as she is celebrated for her
curvaceous figure, having been named "Sexiest Woman" by Details, FHM and People magazines. She blew a lot of people away this year with a stunning turn in NBC's Shades of Blue, a cop show co-starring Ray Liotta.

4. ISSA RAE - the 31-year-old writer and actress from Los Angeles created the web series Awkward Black Girl, which premiered on YouTube in 2011. The web series became a hit. In 2013, the Stanford University graduate who had a degree in African-American studies began working on a comedy pilot with Larry Wilmore, the creator of ABC's Black-ish. HBO picked up the pilot and the fall 2016 saw her show Insecure premiere to critical acclaim. Rae writes and stars and she is phenomenal.

3. KOFI SIRIBOE - the 22-year-old from Los Angeles is from Ghanaian descent. He started acting when he was only 14 with a role in The Longshots (2008) starring Ice Cube. He had small parts here and there. He signed with Wilhelmina Models. He got a recurring role in the MTV series Awkward. His breakout role came in 2016 with OWN's Queen Sugar. However, this same year saw the release of Kicks, in which Siriboe plays the villain but who is just as sexy as he is scary.

2. MORENA BACCARIN - the 37-year-old from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, graduated from Juliard. She co-starred in the series Firefly in 2002 and the ABC remake V in 2009. She earned an Emmy nomination for her role in Showtime's Homeland. She's currently co-starring in FOX's Gotham and had a supporting role in the blockbuster Deadpool earlier this year.

1. ALDEN EHRENREICH - The 26-year-old from Los Angeles was cast to be the new Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars film in 2018. He was reportedly discovered by Steven Spielberg at a bat mitzvah. His first feature film was Tetro (2009), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He got a lot of positive notice for the YA adaptation of Beautiful Creatures (2013). He's worked with more big-name directors like Park Chan-Wook in Stoker and Woody Allen in Blue Jasmine. His breakout role didn't come until earlier this year when he caught the attention of many in Joel and Ethan Coen's Hail, Caesar. Many film critics, either in the LA Times or ScreenCrush,
said that the actor who looks like if James Dean and Sal Mineo had a
baby "steals a movie from... Josh Brolin, George Clooney, [and] Scarlett
Johansson." His latest film is the lead role in Rules Don't Apply,
which brings legendary filmmaker Warren Beatty back to the director's
chair in nearly 20 years. With all this and being tapped as the next Han
Solo certainly makes Ehrenreich Hollywood's current It Boy.

Special mentions go to some amazing athletes at the Rio Olympics. Pita Taufatofua was the Tongan flag bearer whose oiled upper-torso made him a viral-video star and the object of swooning by the female hosts at The Today Show. The Taekwando master was eliminated in his first match but he made a lot of people want to know where Tonga is on the map. Elena Delle Donne is the WNBA star from Delaware who helped the U.S. team take home the gold in baskeball. She also looked stunning in ESPN magazine's Body Issue. Jeffrey Wammes is the Dutch gymnast who medaled in London but couldn't quite get the gold in Rio, yet he's nothing short of gorgeous, but Danell Leyva is the Cuban-American gymnast who won Bronze in London and Silver in Rio. He performed topless in Rio in fact and is currently a model for Mr. Turk swimwear.

Shout outs to other actors in consideration for the sexiest list include Tae-ri Kim, the breakout star of the Korean film The Handmaiden. Billy Flynn is the soap stud of Days of Our Lives who recently got a role in a thriller to be released sometime in 2017. Emma Roberts continues to be an interesting screen presence in Scream Queens but she also had a summer hit film Nerve. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is one of the stars of Lifetime's Unreal. He also had a small role in the comedy Dirty Grandpa earlier in the year, but he's one of those guys whose absolute beauty can't be denied.